


Recovery

by glitterburn (orphan_account)



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-23
Updated: 2011-06-23
Packaged: 2017-10-20 16:06:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/214548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/glitterburn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every action has a reaction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> For lixia84, who prompted ‘hospital visit, recovery’ at Write for Relief.

Pietra Ligure celebrates the arrival of spring. Outside the window of Robert’s hospital room, a palm tree shakes its leaves beneath a passing breeze. He’s studied the palm tree over the course of several long weeks. There’s a dent in its trunk halfway up, as if some careless person has driven into it. Winter has taken the lower leaves, stolen the gloss from the green, leaving limp brown tatters.

Squares of light pattern the blanket drawn up over his bed. He stretches out his right arm, lays it in the path of the sun. Robert looks at the strips of plaster and bandage still holding him in place. He considers the scars, the flesh over shattered bone. He wonders which contains the most metal—him or his Renault. Except it’s not his Renault any more. Nor is it even a Renault. The team name has changed, an operation requiring just as much delicacy as the surgery that put Robert back together.

If everything had gone to plan, Bahrain would be a recent memory and he’d be thinking about ways to win in Australia. His plans were not what God or Fate or anything else intended. Instead of driving and winning races, he lies in his hospital bed, watching the springtime, and wonders how many seasons will pass before he’s whole again.

*

When they first bring him out of the induced coma and describe the extent of the damage, he refuses to believe it. When he stares at the smash of his arm, it looks like it belongs to someone else. He can’t feel it, so it’s not real. When his family visits, his friends and colleagues, he gazes at them in silence as they spout the same empty platitudes over and over: _You will race again. It will take some time. Rest now. Don’t try to rush your recovery_.

He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be recovering from. His useless arm, his injured leg, the coma, the trauma—none of it seems real. He keeps thinking it’s a memory, some strange kind of déjà vu; a dream that brings together the crash in Montreal and the long-ago accident that left him with an arm full of titanium bolts.

While his thoughts continue in this skittering, disjointed manner, he turns his attention to what’s happening in the world beyond his hospital room. When he feels the first stirrings of anger and bitterness, he pushes them outside of himself. It takes more effort than he’d imagined, but he’s rewarded by news reports of the uprising in Bahrain. So confused is he by pain and medication and distress that he comes to believe that somehow, through some kind of freakish butterfly effect, his wishes have caused the cancellation of the first Grand Prix of the season.

*

Fernando comes to visit, sitting in a chair by the side of the bed, jaw dark with stubble and his eyes heavy with shadows. “I’m glad there’s no race until Australia,” he says. “It gives me more time to adjust to the idea that you won’t be here this year.”

Robert’s laugh is brief and pained. “You don’t think I’ll be back?”

Fernando stares. Something flickers in his expression. He looks away, scrubs a weary hand over his face. “The doctors said a year, a full year.”

“The doctors have to say things like that. A year is what it would take for an ordinary person to recover.” Robert stops himself from saying more. The words _I am not an ordinary person_ remain trapped in his throat. The desire to hear them spoken out loud snakes into his chest and lodges there until it hurts.

Fernando sits quietly for a moment too long. He busies himself with picking at a loose thread on his Ferrari team jacket. The thread trails from within his sleeve. He can’t pull it free and gives up; exhales. His shoulders slump. “Yeah.”

Robert shifts against the pillow. “What?”

“Just... you should take it easy.” Fernando smiles. It’s meant to be reassuring, but it looks twisted. He pats Robert’s right hand, then jerks back with a grimace of appalled embarrassment. “Shit. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I hardly feel anything.”

Fernando shakes his head. He looks almost anguished. His reaction seems uncharacteristic, even extreme, and then Robert realises that Fernando feels guilty. It’s not hard to work out why.

Robert closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to look at Fernando while they have this conversation. “You’re glad, aren’t you. Glad I’m not racing.”

Fernando’s protest is muted.

“You are.” Robert cuts across the feeble denials. “I understand.”

Silence rings around them. Robert keeps his eyes shut.

“You’re the only one I fear,” Fernando says at last, his voice rough with raw emotion. “The rest I don’t care about. You’re the only man who could beat me. Of course I’m fucking glad.”

*

Rehabilitation is harder than he anticipated. Everyone looks at him with pity, except for the staff at the clinic, who look at him with calculation. They all want him to get well. Of course they do. It’ll be a triumph for the hospital if he makes a full recovery and is back racing within the year. The sponsors will be delighted, too, and Eric will stop fretting, and Lotus-Renault will breathe a sigh of relief at the return of their star in whom they’ve invested so much.

Robert is sick of pity and calculation. Both expressions are starting to look the same.

*

A knock at the door jolts Robert out of his reverie. He snaps his attention away from the palm tree outside his window and looks over at Vitaly’s frame bulking out the doorway. Robert wonders if the Russian has always been so huge, or if it’s just him that’s shrunk.

Vitaly smiles as he strides into the room. “Hi.”

Robert feels puny. Over the past few weeks, he’s grown used to measuring his physical fitness in tiny increments. His focus has been on exercising the damaged limbs. His mealtimes are regulated, his portions tailored to aid healing. There’s no gym work, no cardio, no balance training. He’s losing his fitness day by day even as he recovers movement and strength. Now here’s Vitaly, wide and tall and full of energy, and the difference between them cuts like a blade, sharpens Robert’s voice into a demand: “What are you doing here?”

Vitaly blinks. He’s slow to answer. He’s always slow to answer. Robert has always liked that about him. They both use the language barrier to think a little before they speak.

“Do I need a reason? I wanted to see you.” Vitaly sits without being invited, dragging a chair from the wall and placing it close to the bed. “The last time I came, you weren’t very talkative.”

“Last time?” Robert frowns.

“You were asleep. Lots of drugs.” Vitaly waves a hand at the top of the bed. His smile is embarrassed. “Many drugs. Probably you didn’t even know I was here.”

Robert remembers the cool, soothing slide of opiates through his veins, the shiny capsules that split open to ooze a sour chemical taste over his tongue. He remembers the drugs but not Vitaly. “Sorry.” He pulls himself up, half sitting against the pillows. “I’m not taking anything now.”

“Is that a wise decision?” Vitaly stands, reverses the chair, sits down with his arms leaning across its back, his long legs spread wide. His posture is casual but commanding. He’d never have sat like that a year ago. “I mean,” he continues, shrugging, “it must still hurt.”

It does still hurt, it hurts like fuck, but Robert isn’t going to let anyone know that. He bares his teeth in a grin. “Might not be a wise decision, but it’s my decision.”

“What does the doctor say?”

Robert heaves his right arm closer to his body. “He says I’m stubborn.”

Vitaly chuckles. “Is that the polite way of saying you’re a tough bastard?”

That draws a smile. “Maybe.”

They talk for a while of inconsequential things before the conversation turns to their team. Vitaly tells him about testing, answering his many questions in patient detail. Robert is pleased. Everyone else has brushed off his need for such specific information. They avoid his questions and tell him not to trouble himself, but how can he recover unless he knows what he’s fighting for?

He judges the timing of his next enquiry. “How’s Nick?”

“He shaved,” Vitaly says, straight-faced.

Robert stares at him, then starts to laugh.

Vitaly grins. Robert relaxes, and the conversation moves on.

A short while later, when there’s a lull in their flow of words, Vitaly says, “I bought a pack of playing cards.”

Robert nods. He knows Vitaly collects them. “Scenic views of Pietra Ligure?”

“Just plain ordinary cards.” Vitaly puts his hand in his jacket pocket. He brings out the pack. It’s still wrapped in cellophane and marked with an airport price tag. He picks at the wrapper, unpeels it. Crumples the cellophane and tosses it into the nearby wastepaper bin, then flicks back the top flap and taps the base of the box.

Robert inches sideways. He can almost smell the new cards, that fresh chemical scent of plastic coating or whatever it is they put around the edges.

“I didn’t buy them for me,” Vitaly says. He slides the cards free of the pack and holds them in one hand, weighing them, then sets them on the bed. “They’re for you.”

Robert snorts. “I don’t think I’ll be playing poker for a while.”

Vitaly glances up, his eyes clear. “You don’t know that for sure.”

A flip comment hovers on Robert’s lips. He swallows it; nods again. “Maybe I can practise shuffling them.”

“Yes. Start small. Get used to the pack.” Vitaly turns over the top card. It’s a Joker. He moves it aside, then takes the next and the next until he’s picked out all the Jokers. He collects them together and puts the little pile into his pocket. He smiles at Robert. “You don’t need any Jokers.”

“No. I don’t.” Robert finds himself smiling back.

“Here.” Vitaly pushes the rest of the cards towards him. “Practice. The next time I come, we can play a game.”

Robert eases his arm across the blanket and curls his fingers. He grits his teeth, focusing on the simple action. He manages to make a scoop of his hand and brings the pile closer. He can feel them sliding and slipping; he can feel them, individual sharp plastic-coated cards tickling, the corners digging into his skin.

He can _feel_.

He reaches across with his left hand and takes the cards, squeezing them in a tight grip. Keeping his emotions steady, his voice neutral, he says, “Thanks.”

Vitaly looks at him, not with pity or calculation but with the expression of someone looking forward to a game of cards with a friend.

“No problem,” he says as he gets up. He puts the chair back in its place and heads for the door. He pauses before he leaves. “See you soon.”

Robert nods. “Yeah.” He leans back on the pillow, tilting his head until he can look out of the window. The door clicks shut. “Yeah,” he says again, left hand clasped around the pack of cards, the fingers of his right hand moving over the softness of the blanket. “Yeah.”

Outside, the palm tree is shaken by the breeze.


End file.
